Movie Pitch #3: Under The Hood

In December 2011, Anomalous Material, led by Castor, had held another Hollywood Fantasy Draft…but, it was done in a different way. We are no longer need to write Movie Pitch. However, because I pick all my actors based on the story I wanted to pitch…I decided to still write the pitch even though no one else had done it. I don’t want the actors I have picked go wasted.

The story is a bit cruel and I find it hard to write the ending. When I wrote it as a short story, it is fine to have a hanging ending but as a movie, I want it to have a clear ending…not as inconclusive as the short. You can read my original short story here.

Here goes my third movie pitch🙂

Logline: Based on a short story by Novia Rozet, a.k.a me, comes the story of a serial killer unlike anyone has ever seen before. Will you believe your eyes when you see him?

Director:Guillermo DelToro

I chose him as my director because he could create the kind of atmosphere I want for my movie. He did well in creating mysterious and depressing atmosphere in Pan’s Labyrinth.

Cast:

Jennifer Connelly will play as Caroline Murphy, a smart and attractive homicide detective. She was a great detective but she had a mysterious aura that made her not so famous amongst other detectives. Her only friend was her partner and her boyfriend.

Martin Freeman will play as Nicholas Charlton, Caroline’s partner. Nick was the perfect partner for Caroline as he was the opposite of her. He was cheerful and liked by others. They have been partners for years and he was practically the only man Caroline had ever cared more than any of her boyfriends.

Sigourney Weaver will play as Alexandra McCarthy. She was the head of Homicide division.

Ewan McGregor will play as Harry Smith, Caroline’s boyfriend.

Benedict Cumberbatch will play as The Hooded Man, the wanted serial killer.

Robert Pattisson will play as Gus Stewart, one of the victims that showed some resistance toward the predator.

Prologue:

Caroline was seen running through a thick conservation park. She was chasing a man who was wearing a robe and a hood that covered his head and face. The fog started covering the place and made things difficult to be seen. The man moved around in confident as he knew the place so well while Caroline was grasping in the dark as she knew nothing about that place. She relied on her hearing sense more then her sight, and then the sound of a broken twig was heard near her.

Story / Plot

Caroline and Nick walked toward a crime scene where a man was lying on his back; he was wrapped tightly inside a plastic bag. She thought the plastic bag was to prevent the man from struggling against his capturer. Then she saw his face or what left of it, there was blood everywhere but she still could see that there was no face underneath that blood. The whitish part of his skull was visibly seen. Whoever killed him had taken away his face.

Further investigation reported that the victim was still alive when the perpetrator peeled the victim’s face. There were no finger prints and no important clues were found.

McCarthy gave them full authority on the case. But the investigation was going nowhere as there was almost no clue about the killer.

Two months later, another body with the same condition was found not far from the pine wood forest. The founding of the second body made the killer known as Faceoff Killer.

They couldn’t find any similarity of both victims, except the fact that they no longer had face. The first victim was a banker and the second victim was a homeless. They didn’t have similar face or facial bone. One thing that connected them both was the place, both were found near the X park.

The man in the hooded robe was moving around a place like cave and breathing heavily, we could only see his back. He was holding the victim’s face and moving it closer to his face.

Caroline and Harry were having an argument. Harry wanted her to let the case go asit was getting too dangerous and gruesome.

Two months later, A young man of twenties named Gus Stewart was walking alone near the park. A man suddenly showed up in front of him, he was dragging a baseball bat. Stewart knew something was not right and tried to run but the man caught him. Stewart struggled hard but the man managed to put him down. He let out a big knife from under his robe and started to take Stewart’s face off.

Stewart’s body was found and the police started to suspect the park. They did a thorough search but found nothing. But the two months interval gave them new lead. Policemen were found patrolling near the park, no one was allowed to go near the park till they captured the killer. Caroline and Nick were one of the police that patrolled near the park.

Nick left Caroline to get something to drink. Half an hour later, she heard a scream. She tried calling Nick but there was no answer. She told headquarter that she heard a scream and went to check it. She went to the direction of the scream but found no one. She kept searching and finally found a baseball bat with blood on it. She was both terrified and excited. “I am going to nail this son of bitch” she thought.

Without waiting for back-up, she walked into the park. It took almost half an hour for her to find the thing that will haunt her dream forever. What she saw chilled her blood; a man in long cloak with the hood covering his face was kneeling on top of a man. There was blood around the victim’s head. The hooded man, the Faceoff Killer, had a knife in his left hand and a lump of bloody meat in his right hand. She looked at the victim, he no longer had face but she recognized his clothes, it was Nick’s. She was too shocked to move, she couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed.

The killer felt her presence. He suddenly stood up and ran leaving her behind. Caroline finally snapped out of her shock and shot the killer. It didn’t hit him. Caroline chased him into the park ignoring all the dangers that lay ahead.

Epilogue:

Through the thick fog and the dense wood, she kept chasing him. She hated him so much. She would not let him see another day. “Damn this fog!!” she whispered between her breath. She didn’t realize that tears were falling from her eyes. She would rather die than letting the killer got away.

She heard a twig being stepped on and resumed her chase; little did she know she was being led by the killer.

Caroline finally saw the killer. He was standing with his back on her. She could see that there was cliff in front of the man. She aimed her gun at him.

“Turn around, asshole!!” she shouted.

The killer turned around slowly. Blood was dripping from the meat he was holding in his right hand, the meat was Nick’s face. Seeing Nick’s face angered her even more, however there was something about the killer that terrified her so bad.

The killer lifted his head.

“Oh my God,” Caroline whispered breathlessly. “What are you?”

The hooded man, the faceoff killer, had no face underneath his hood. There were only slit where a mouth should be and two small holes where a nose should be. He moved so fast, giving Caroline no chance to recover. There was fight between them only to be won by the killer. The killer knocked her down and prepared to skin her face. We could hear his whisper as he touch her face, ‘nice face’.

Note:

I didn’t tell much about Weaver and McGregor’s role because I don’t want to make this pitch too long, but they quite significant in the story.

Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better ending, I still like the hanging ending I created for my short, letting people decide what kind of ending they like it to be.

Will you watch my movie? It is not a slasher movie, it is more like Se7en.

27 comments on “Movie Pitch #3: Under The Hood”

Wow this is quite a detailed pitch, Nov, well done! Mine is going to just be the synopsis and perhaps some detailed description of some scenes, but it’ll be much shorter than the original 3 pitches I’ve done.

Guillermo Del Toro and serial killer, oh boy it’s gonna be bloody!! I like Se7en, but it’s not as gory as Del Toro’s work though. But with this cast, I’ll be sure to see it! Nice to see the two Sherlock actors reuniting here and also in The Hobbit!

Thank you Ruth🙂
at first, I was planning to write a synopsis or at least far shorter than this…but I find it so difficult to cut down the story. I really like this story, I know it might sound a bit arrogant to say that I like my own story…but this is one of my favs of all I have written. If I have the right determination and time to spend, I’d love to turn this into a novel.

Although I said it’s kinda like se7en but not exatcly the same, it would be much darker….but one thing for sure, I don’t want it to be like those teenager slasher movies.

Hehe I have so much heart toward those 2 actors, too bad we can’t hear Benedict sexy voice in this movie😉

Thank you Miyuki…I like all the actors I have picked, except for the one who played Gus, he is there as my money maker😉

To be honest, Caroline…the real Caroline…was the one who suggested Jennifer Connelly to me. I imagine a dark haired woman with mysterious aura, my first thought was Sandra Bullock but she is not mysterious enough…then Caroline proposed Connelly and it hit me straight away, she is the perfect one. No one else can be my Caroline character.
I am happy to know you also pictured her when reading the story.

Just sharing a future story material, I am trying to write something with my lovely CM as the main character😉

I was kind of underwhelmed to be honest…i didn’t feel i got to know Caroline at all(or at least, not enough for a main character) and the ending seemed pointless to me. Perhaps on screen i might like it more, as i do think Toro is a good director, but the pitch didn’t grab me. Sorry

Gruesome and dark story indeed. Almost something you could find on a TV show like The Twilight Zone but darker. I like it Novia! One thing, you don’t need to note “act 1-7” because those aren’t really acts. Most story have a 3 or 4-act structure

Thank you Cas🙂
I thought you are going to say it’s too gruesome for your taste.
Thank you for the suggestion, I am still learning in this pitch thing. I will edit it when I write my next post, changing those acts to be story and keep prologue and epilogue.

When Castor announced that we were going to have another Fantasy Draft,I immediately thought of a short story I have written. It made me easier to turn it into a pitch. I like it to be a real location, I made the story after seeing this photo

But I don’t know exactly where that is. If I know conservation parks (like the one in The Rise of the Planet of The Apes) in Europe or US, I would have mentioned the name.

Oooohhh!! That’s something I wanted to know too!
When I first read the story i was picturing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park… but that’s because this story so reminds me of a 1970’s police movie combined with one of the horror movies they made back then. It has a very “70’s” vibe for me, with your policewoman like a female version of “Dirty Harry”… the “police person on the edge”, always in trouble with her superiors over procedural things.

Maybe I get that feeling because you gave all your characters very “American” sounding names… Was that intentional?

Do they really have American names?
Hahaha I never thought of that, Caroline is…well you know Caroline and I pick Murphy because of Cillian. He is not in this pitch so the least I can do is use his last name.Nicholas Charlton is because Nick Jobe shared his novel in the first pitch and that inspired me to share my short, and Charlton is Benedict’s middle name. I use Stewartbecause of you know Pattison and Stewart. I didn’t realize they would sound American😉

Well I don’t know any place in US. I will take your imagination of SF Golden Gate Park as the location because I want it to be a real place not a made up one.

Yes… they do sound very “American” to me… and in particular the name “Murphy” (which is Irish, I know ;)) is used a lot in movies and books for the name of policemen here. It’s funny that you should just accidentally choose such an appropriate one for your character.
You would like Golden Gate Park too as a location. It’s big and can be very isolated and foreboding even though it is in the middle of one of our biggest cities. There is a bridge over a lake that makes me think would be a perfect place for your killer to live…. soooo creepy!! Here is a picture!!

I sat here at my computer reading your pitch completely entranced. I like the fact that you utilize del Toro’s visual mastery by allowing the Face Off Killer to be a creature of odd appearance and background instead of just some regular dude.

I like your pitch. I am deciding on how to finish mine if I am to have it submitted by the deadline. Bravo on yours! bravo!

Hey, I’d watch any movie where Robert Pattinson gets killed (and in a violent manner, no less).

A little iffy on the director. del Toro is a very good director, but I’m not sure if this is the kind of movie he’d direct. (I do however like the description of the Hooded Man. Now that I can picture.) And since you said it’s like Se7en, why not David Fincher? (Unless Jordan got him before you did, then I understand.)

And speaking from the bottom of my fandom heart, Sherlock wouldn’t do that to John! He just wouldn’t! (Sorry, couldn’t contain it at all.)

hehe I needed extra points because most my actors only have few movies or no movie at all in 2012…but I dont like my points maker, hence he was casted to be killed😉

Actually, Deltoro is my first choice. I want my movie to have a dark an eerie feeling. What I meant by it’s going to be like se7en is the fact that it’s not going to be like a slasher kind of movie.

gyahahaha so glad you noticed the Sherlock and John connection, aren’t they just adorable! However, I think they love each other in the miniseries as Sherlock will try to kill John too (not only in my pitch) in The Hobbit😉

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